AN ACCIDENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL HERO

Yossi Sarid was Minister of the Environment for less than three years, but no one has had a greater influence on Israel's environmental self-image. A brilliant and complex figure in Israeli politics for over thirty years, there was nothing that indicated that he would assume the role of environmen-tal icon for the 1990s. Sarid began his political career in 1964, not yet twenty-five years old, as both a protégé and enfant terrible of the ruling Mapai (Labor) Party. The son of two Hebrew teachers, he inherited their facile rhetorical proficiency and staunch commitment to principles.

After immigrating to Israel in 1932, Sarid's father, Yaakov, moved up the ladder in the Mapai and the Israeli educational bureaucracy. Eventually he was appointed Director General of the Ministry of Education and Culture. (In 1965, it was Yaakov Sarid—not Ben-Gurion—who made the fateful decision to ban the Beatles from playing in Israel, lest they corrupt the nation's youth.^[63]) Sarid speaks of his late father with reverence, but one can feel that the high expectations placed on this only son produced competing impulses of service and rebellion. For instance, the precocious youngster was snuck into the Labor Zionist youth movement prematurely while only eight. Nine years later, Sarid was thrown out for smoking in high school, taking him off the well-trod Labor Zionist track to rural set-tlement and the kibbutz.

The army did not know how to take advantage of the gifted but cheeky adolescent. He served for two years, mostly in the artillery. Soon after re-turning to civilian life, he began studying literature and philosophy at

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Hebrew University. Sarid's ability to turn a phrase and his sonorous bari-tone voice made him radiophonic enough to get a job at Kol Yisrael, then Israel's only radio station. He worked there for four years, until 1964, when he switched to print media. The Yediot Ahronot daily newspaper hired him first as a court reporter and then as a satirist. Later that year, looking for a hip but loyal media whiz, the Mapai leadership offered him the position of spokesman. He gained their trust, and in 1965 Prime Minister Eshkol made him a policy adviser. Eight years later, at age thirty-three, he became the youngest member of the Knesset.

From the start he was a player. Sarid claims that in 1974 he convinced Pinhas Sapir, the consummate Labor power broker, to back Yitzhak Rabin for Prime Minister, which led to his narrow victory over Shimon Peres.^[64] His political future as leader of the Labor Party seemed assured. But Yossi Sarid was too restless and self-righteous to bide his time. He refused to back down in efforts to expedite the resignation of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan, whom he blamed for sundry debacles during the Yom Kippur War. He opposed the Labor Party's West Bank settlement policy, arguing that it would be a disaster in the long run. The media loved to quote him, and he always had something clever to say. To many Israelis, he was too smart for his own good. For instance, he took potshots (which he later regretted) at Yitzhak Rabin's drinking problems and was merciless in his attacks (which he did not regret) on religious right-wing chauvinism and the secret reli-gious underground dedicated to killing Arabs.

Sarid himself realized that he was out of step. After the 1984 election stalemate, Sarid declined to support a national unity government with the Likud and resigned the Labor Party to join Ratz, a leftist splinter party run by human rights crusader Shulamith Aloni. Later Ratz merged with two other leftist parties to become the Meretz Party, receiving almost 10 per-cent of the votes in the 1992 elections. Prime Minister Rabin could not form a coalition without Meretz. Initially, Sarid was passed over for a Ministerial portfolio. But in October 1993, Rabin realized he would not be able to expand the coalition. He promoted Ora Namir to be Minister of Labor and gave Sarid the booby prize—the Ministry of the Environment. Sarid was knowledgeable about any number of subjects, but the environ-ment was not one of them.